I Want You To Want Me. Kathy Love

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      “Sherri,” Vittorio greeted the bartender, one of his longtime acquaintances. He hesitated to call her a friend, since they never saw each other outside of this shabby back room. But he supposed in a strange way, they were.

      “Vittorio,” she greeted with a smile. Her smiles always held a sardonic quality, as if she knew far more about you than she let on—and in many cases, he was sure she did. In fact, he was counting on it.

      “You haven’t been in for a while,” she said, already reaching under the bar for a highball glass to make his drink.

      “Been doing some traveling,” he told her. That gave such a pleasant ring to what he’d been doing.

      “Nice.” She lifted the bottle of whiskey before pouring. “The usual?”

      He nodded, sliding onto a barstool, pleased to see the room was empty. Too early for the type of crowd who came here. Vampires, the occasional werewolf and other forms of shapeshifters—and musicians, a sort of supernatural breed all their own. Ironically, Sherri was the only constant—and she was human.

      She slid the whiskey on the rocks in front of him, but he didn’t immediately take a drink. Instead he got right to what he’d come here for.

      “Do you remember Amanda?”

      Sherri frowned for a moment, searching her memory bank of late-night patrons. “Amanda? The one who fronted that band at The Purple Haze?”

      Vittorio nodded. “What happened to her?”

      Sherri gave him a surprised look, as if she couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard. After all, Vittorio had once spent plenty of time with Amanda.

      “She was found dead in her apartment. God, that must have been at least three years ago now. I think they labeled it heart failure. You know, she had a cocaine problem for years. Well, of course you know that.”

      Vittorio nodded. Amanda struggled with drugs for years. When he’d first met her, she hadn’t just restricted herself to coke. She mixed; whatever she could get. But he also knew she was doing a great job staying clean the last time he’d seen her.

      But relapses were common. And maybe she had. Maybe she had just gotten careless. Fallen off the wagon, hard.

      “But you know,” Sherri added as she absently wiped down the worn bar top, “I recall hearing that they didn’t find any drugs in her system.”

      Vittorio’s muscles tensed. “Really?”

      “Probably the damage was already done. Her heart just gave out or something.”

      Vittorio nodded again, even though he wasn’t sure he agreed. She’d been killed. Possibly like Angela, Jessalynn. God, the list went on and on.

      Nausea swelled over him like a warm, salty wave, threatening to drown him. Amanda made number twenty. Twenty women in as many years. Women he’d known. Women he’d helped—or thought he’d helped. They’d all trusted him. And now they were all dead.

      Anyone looking at all these deaths, however, wouldn’t necessarily find them unusual—after all, they were all drug users, some were prostitutes, others just living hard and fast lives. Prime candidates for early deaths. But even for a vampire who’d been alive for over two hundred years, the rate of unusual and premature deaths around him was high.

      He glanced at his acquaintance on the other side of the bar. Sherri didn’t realize just how lucky she was that they had only remained acquaintances. Friends didn’t fare well around him. Maybe it was the natural course of things, or maybe it was something more.

      He was leaning toward something more these days.

      “And you remember Julianne, that little short girl from where The Impalers play?” Sherri asked, dragging him out of his thoughts. “I think she started there while you were still playing with the band.”

      “Yes,” he said slowly, already dreading what Sherri would say about the sweet girl who’d moved here from backwoods Alabama. A girl he’d lent a sympathetic ear to on a number of occasions when he’d worked with the band. He’d even seen her some months ago while visiting Ren.

      “Last April, she was found dead. Jumped out the window of her apartment on Decatur. You didn’t hear about that?”

      Vittorio shook his head, feeling numb. That’s when he’d seen her. April. He’d been here for Ren and Maggie’s wedding. He’d sat at the bar, after hours, and chatted with her. Something about her always called to him. She looked a little—lost.

      “It was weird too,” Sherri continued. “She was in here the night before she died. With her boyfriend, and they seemed quite happy. All sweet smiles like she always was. She certainly didn’t strike me as someone who was going to hurl herself out a window the following night.”

      “What night was that?” He could feel nausea rising, making it hard to swallow.

      “Early April, I think.”

      Vittorio nodded. She’d killed herself right around the time he’d seen her. Or she’d been killed.